2025-05-09
score: 7
type: fiction (mom's book club)
i'm glad i read this book.
i like how it explores Parkinson's disease, from both the perspective of the individual afflicted by the illness and the people around them. Parkinson's is a horrible disease, losing control of one's own body is terrifying; Piñeiro did such a great job describing how Elena felt living with the illness that i was physically uncomfortable reading it, making sure that my body was still mobile after reading these gruesome passages. i was also touched by Rita, Elena's daughter who helps her mom navigate the world with a body she cannot control. we sometimes underestimate the impact of debilitating illnesses on helpers, as the son of a partially disabled dad, i sympathized with Rita greatly; it's not easy.
another topic that this book explores is abortion. more precisely, it touches on who is making the decision to or not-to abort. sadly, we still live in an age where non-mothers make decisions that will affect every woman (in the USA).
dialogue between Elena (mom) and Rita (daughter)
Just go and stop complaining, you’re going to feel much better when it’s over. But I don’t feel bad, it’s only my toenails that bother me, and you can cut them for me next week. That’s true, Mum, even though I think it’s disgusting, I can cut your toenails, I could even do it today, but then what? What do you mean? After the toenails, then what? I don’t know how to dye or cut hair. Is all that necessary, Rita? Her daughter glances at her briefly before saying, Have you looked in the mirror, Mum? No, Elena answers. Well, it shows, go and stand in front of a mirror some time. I stand in front of the bathroom mirror but I can’t see myself, I can only see the tap and the sink. Take the mirror down off the wall, Mum, and put it in front of your face, look at yourself and then you’ll understand. Why do you care so much about how I look, Rita? The problem isn’t how you look but who has to look at you. I’m the one who has to look at you, every day, Mum, I help you out of bed every morning and see your toothless mouth, your expressionless eyes, I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner across from you, watching your drool mix with your food into a disgusting paste, I put you to bed at night and I bring you a glass of water so you can put your teeth inside it, but it’s hard for you to get them in so I have to touch them, to pick them up and put them in the glass with my own hands, I go to sleep but the day doesn’t end there because a few hours later you’ll be calling for me to take you to the bathroom, and I take you, I pull down your underwear, I pull it up, I don’t have to wipe you, that’s true, I won’t wipe you, that’s too much, but I sit you on the bidet and hand you a towel, and I hang it up to dry, I flush the toilet so the water will carry your urine away, I lie you back down in bed, I tuck you in, you stare at me from bed, toothless, with your eyes that look constantly surprised and your whiskers sticking out of your cheeks like wires, and I’m about to leave when you call me back, again, to arrange your feet, or the sheet, or the pillow, so I go back, I see you again, and once again I smell that stench of piss that never goes away completely because it’s you, because it has saturated your skin, and I hear you take your hoarse, snoring breaths, I turn off the light on your bedside table and I see your teeth again, the ones I put into the glass myself, with my own hands, I wipe them off on my pyjamas, but they still smell, like you. So the problem is me, Mum, the problem is that I have to look at you. And that’s going to change if I go to the hairdresser? No, you’re right, if it were up to you nothing would ever change, but you’re going to go anyway and you’re going to change.
on the topic of abortion
That afternoon, Rita, who was not a mother and never would be, forced another woman to become one, applying the dogma she’d learned to another woman’s body.
a description of Parkinson's (quite paradoxical)
Observing it, looking at it in order to tell others about it, with all the contradictions that implied, like the contradiction of saying a paralysed body is agitated.